Bars of soap have been used for many years as a convenient way to clean one's hands by rubbing the bar between wet hands and letting the soap mingle with water to create a soapy lather that can perform cleaning actions. Bar soap is often used in this way in household and other similar settings where access to the bar is limited to a relatively small number of familiar people. The use of bar soap often becomes less appealing in settings where it is available to large numbers of people due to worry of cross contamination or the bar being carried off, for example. These concerns can hamper use of specialty or luxury bar soaps (which have become increasingly popular in recent years) in settings where access is somewhat limited but still public in nature, such as in bathrooms of upscale restaurants, for example.
One way to overcome these concerns is to restrict access to the bar itself and allow removal of shavings from the bar which then can be used for cleaning purposes. Use of bar soap in this manner allows many people to use the same bar in a public setting without worry of cross contamination or loss. Therefore, it would be advantageous for those wishing to expand markets for specialty bar soaps to have an automated device which easily and conveniently provides shavings from bar soap without having to come into direct physical contact with the bars themselves. This would allow use of bar soap in settings where liquid hand soap dispensers are currently used.
Others have thought of and patented various soap slicing or grating devices. These include:
U.S. Pat. No. 534,117 issued in 1895 shows a push pull device that slices of pieces of soap like a modern mandolin kitchen product.
U.S. Pat. No. 879,780 shows a dispenser with a rocking action where each rotational up and down action slices off a piece of soap.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,441,034 discloses a soap dispenser that also uses a rotational motion to dispense soap that is already in a shredded form.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,480,271 shows a soap dispenser that has a reciprocating cutter blade which cuts on a 45-degree angle.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,204,440 shows a horizontally disposed rotary handle that causes a slicing action within a container. There is a push plate that forces the soap (or food) down into the grinding blades.
Although others have patented ways of slicing thin pieces of soap to be used for cleaning purposes, there still remains deficiencies in the prior art. One shortcoming is that soap cutting devices of the prior art use slicing actions, rather than a grating or shredding action, to cut the soap which results in larger pieces being produced. A grating action can produce finer soap shavings which make them easier and faster to dissolve when exposed to water. Another shortcoming is that prior designs do not provide fully automated systems which are configured to conveniently drop a portion of soap shaving into a person's hands for easy use in washing one's hands. Finally, previous designs do not allow users to easily see when the soap needs to be replaced. It would additionally be advantageous to display the bar of soap being grated so that people who enjoy the experience of using the soap gratings can take note of the soap brand and be able to perhaps purchase bars of that brand for their own private use.